Monster

You’re the reason I stay alone at night
You’re the reason I get shown love but I still choose to fight
Father? Yea right, you never was there
Our family, our troubles admit it you never cared
When you was broken, dirty, down on your luck
I put money inside your pockets, I lifted you up
Do you remember when, your ex-girlfriend was tripping?
Tried to catch you up, send you to court, and put you in the system?
I talked to her, yea I calmed her down
But little did I know she seen what I see in you now
You’re a coward, you’re a snake, man you is a clown
Why did I ever trust you, why did I keep you around?
Where were you when Shawn and Meek died?
You promised your sister to hold her down, you promised to be by her side
Another lie to her hat I got to defend
You ain’t no brother, you ain’t a father, you ain’t a son you ain’t a friend
A friend never leaves his boys while they’re on the streets starving
A son never forgets his mom and all her problems
So many truths about you I couldn’t even swallow
These thoughts get so deep as I drink through this bottle
Yea I’m fucked up, but not as fucked up as you
We always did you favors
We always treated you good
You dead to us, you’re no more, brother you through
If you stay around us, I might end up hurting you.

PUBLISH YOUR OWN BOOK OF POETRY

Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”